


I Ate Them, Just Like A Titan

by nerdelation8



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Angsty Armin, Bittersweet Ending, Crying, Eventual Relationships, Fear, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Macro/Micro, Post-Vore Guilt, Pred Armin, Regretful Armin, Reiner and Bertholdt realize they love each other, Shrinking, Soft Vore, Titan Shifters, Vomiting, Vore, shrink rays, survey corps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-10 16:23:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20854742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdelation8/pseuds/nerdelation8
Summary: Armin shrinks Reiner and Bertholdt and swallows them whole.  The Survey Corps congratulates him, but Armin feels regretful and runs off to vomit up his former friends.  He wonders if a deal can be made between the two Titan Shifters and the Survey Corps.In the midst of all this, Reiner and Bertholdt confess their feelings for one another.





	1. I'm Going to End This

Armin looked down at the shrunken Reiner and Bertholdt. The men trembled as they held each other. Reiner gritted his teeth. Bertholdt was crying. 

Armin set down Hange’s prototype shrink ray. It clattered on the cobblestone street, right next to a huge piece of roof from the nearest house. 

“I’m going to end this,” Armin said. “I’m sorry, you seemed like nice people, but you both just told me you’d _never_ stop attacking the walls. Killing us.” He clenched his teeth and refused to let his emotions surface. “You can’t be allowed to live.”

“Please, Armin!” Bertholdt begged. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “Don’t kill us! I’ll do anything! We’ll do anything!”

Reiner kept slashing his arm, but soon realized that he couldn't turn into a Titan anymore. Bertholdt discovered the same thing. 

“Don’t plead for mercy,” Reiner said with resignation. He and Bertholdt were only a couple inches tall right now, and Armin had confiscated their ODM gear. 

“Just accept it, Bert. We did our best…as Warriors.” Now his eyes were getting moist too.

“I’m sorry,” Armin said. The blond giant grasped Bertholdt between two fingers, easily lifting him out of Reiner’s arms. Both men kicked and swung at the giant hand, but their efforts were fruitless.

Armin hardened his heart. He said, “Actually, I’m _not_ sorry. It’s only fair that I do to you what your actions did to so many of my friends!”

“No! NO!” the dark-haired man screamed as Reiner, and the ground, got farther and farther away. “Don’t hurt me!” he begged the giant. “Armin! You're not a killer! Remember those times we had in training? Remember when you predicted the weather from my sleeping position, and won five rations? Remember that time we helped you in Capture the Flag? You’re our friend-_Armin, no!”_

Reiner stumbled and fell backwards.

_Bert’s going to die in front of me,_ he realized. 

As Armin stared at his terrified captive, he hesitated. Was he really going to kill this man? 

_Don't be a sissy,_ he urged himself. _You have to do it...there’s no choice._

Armin's pink lips opened. As Bertholdt was brought toward them, he began screaming and thrashing harder.

“For God's sake, don’t kill him!” Reiner pleaded.

Armin squinched his eyes shut. “I’m sorry!” he cried, before throwing Bertholdt into his mouth. 

He swallowed quickly. The hard lump moved down his throat. 

Bertholdt shrieked as he was sucked downwards. He flailed his arms, and something warm ran down his white pant legs as he kicked them.

Then he was gone. 

Armin waited until the thing he had swallowed made it to his stomach. Then he opened his eyes.

Reiner was devastated. His hand was still reaching through the air. Trembling. Bertholdt Hoover – that beautiful, sensitive warrior, who'd become more than just his best friend – was gone. 

Armin’s throat felt tight as he stared at the horrified Reiner. _What have I done?!_

His blue eyes stung.

_I can't wuss out. I have to defeat them, or all of my friends died for nothing!_

“You don’t have to do this, Armin,” Reiner urged. His face was deathly pale. He lifted a shaking arm as if to steady the situation. He continued, “This isn’t like you. You can let me go and we…w-we can still save Bert…” 

Armin clutched Reiner’s midsection. He could feel the man stifling his sobs as he brought him in front of his face. 

“No, I can’t!” the giant cried. “I _tried_ negotiating with you, but you just said you had to kill us! Why?!" 

He was shouting now.

"Why do my friends have to die? Why’d you bring Titans to kill us? _What the hell did we ever do to you?!”_

Reiner just stared in shock.

His silence made the blond boy even more hysterical. “You _still_ aren’t talking to me!” he screamed frantically. “All you understand is kill, kill, kill! _Fine!”_

Armin tossed Reiner into his mouth. He wet the struggling man with saliva, then steeled his nerves and swallowed.

Then Armin lost it. 

“I’m sorry!” he cried, bursting out in ugly wails. “Please forgive me! I didn’t want to kill you!”

He placed the derringer-sized shrink ray into his pocket and sobbed. Tears fell onto his boots.

“Th-There was no other way!”

Reiner was trapped inside the disgustingly warm pit of Armin’s stomach. No light penetrated here. He had to feel around to find his friend. 

“Bertholdt!” he shouted. Acids sloshed around his boots and seeped into his socks.

He found the lanky man on the floor of the stomach. One of Bert's hands was around his knees, the other gripped his hair. 

“D-Dead…we’re dead…” the man repeated.

Reiner sidled up to his best friend and enveloped him in a hug. The acid pool rose higher. 

“Looks like...our backs are against the wall here," the blond said. "But at least we’re facing this together.”

Bertholdt said sadly, “You’re always so brave, Reiner. I wish…I wish I was more like you. I never should have been a Warrior.”

A tear fell onto his uniform.

“No, Bert. You did good.” Reiner suddenly regretted being so harsh with Bertholdt before their last mission. “You and I…and Annie… we gave it our best shot.” Reiner wiped his eyes with his forearm. His voice broke. “For Marley.”

Reiner moved his hand up and down Bertholdt's back, trying to comfort him. Then their hug ended, and they both seemed to have the same idea, lips meeting in a desperate kiss.

When they finally pulled away, Reiner smiled. “Bert, I've been meaning to say...” Bertholdt's heart leapt in his chest. But the tone of his friend's voice had changed. Something was wrong. The blond man suddenly said, “Wait…are…” 

He glanced around in confusion.

_Please, Reiner,_ Bertholdt begged, _don’t lose your mind now._

“Are we inside a Titan?” Reiner asked.


	2. Rescue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Survey Corps congratulate Armin, but he's filled with regret. He runs into a house and vomits up the Titan Shifters.

Eren, Connie, and Sasha approached Armin. The young man was weeping in the street.

“Armin, it’s not safe here!” said Sasha.

“Get up!” commanded Eren. 

Mikasa wasn’t far behind Eren. “Armin, what’s wrong?”

Armin rocked back and forth on the ground. “I…I killed them…”

Eren’s eyebrows moved up. “Who?”

“R-Reiner and Bertholdt,” he choked out.

Eren’s eyes lit up with excitement. Then he saw the sadness on Connie and Sasha’s faces, as well as Armin’s. He tempered his mood a little. 

“Armin…” he held the man’s shoulders. “you’re serious. You really got them?”

Their friend had stopped rocking, but was still upset. He nodded.

_Yes!_ Eren thought to himself. _They're dead!_

He shot a green flare into the air.

Jean, who’d also zipped over, said, “Hey, Armin killed them? That’s awesome! The Beast and Cart Titans fled, so that means…we won!”

Mikasa shot him a glare.

“What?” Jean looked down at Armin. “What’s wrong?”

“I n-need some time alone,” their blond friend said, teetering on the brink.

“What?” Jean asked. 

“Leave me ALONE!” Armin shouted. Then he ran off. 

“Let’s give him space,” said Sasha. She pulled a small loaf of bread from her pocket and began nibbling it. “Anyone hungry? I've...got a roll here.”

“I’ll have some,” Connie said, thanking her. Then he looked into the distance. “Poor Reiner and Bertholdt…”

Eren said angrily, “What do you mean, poor them? They’re our enemy! Those bastards caused all this! To hell with ‘poor Reiner and Bertholdt!’”

Connie said, “I just meant that…”

Eren started yelling again. “I don’t even know why Armin’s crying about it! He’s a fucking hero! He did what we’ve all been _trying_ to do for months!”

Mikasa told him to be quiet, he was getting too loud. 

“Goddamnit, Mikasa! We can’t fucking celebrate?”

"Don't talk to me like that," she said.

“What’s going on here?” said Levi as he zipped in. 

Armin ran into an alley. He found a door and scrambled through it. 

He couldn’t bear knowing that he'd murdered his former friends. 

_I ate them alive, just like a Titan._

_I’m a monster…_

Armin fell to the dusty wooden floor. Light shone in from the holes in the ceiling, holes that had been torn through the building in the Beast Titan’s attack.

Armin tried to rationalize what he’d done. _I had to kill them, that was the only choice…_

_No! I’m not a murderer!_

Resolve washed over his face. 

_Th-There’s still time to save them!_

Armin thrust his pink hands into his throat as hard as he could. Then he lurched to the side, feeling his bile rise, and threw up. The horrible feeling soon gave way to relief. 

When the retching was over, he opened his eyes. 

There, lying in a pool of filth, were the astonished Reiner and Bertholdt. 

Reiner grimaced, clutching his left forearm. It had been broken at an unnatural angle, and his left foot had been twisted one hundred and eighty degrees under him. 

Armin was shocked. Those injuries must have happened as Reiner was barfed up. 

Bertholdt’s long arms and legs were curled around him. It made Armin think of a dead spider. Slowly, nervously, the shrunken man extended his limbs. No damage. 

For a moment he cowered, apprehensively, as if Armin might attack him. Then he rushed to Reiner's side.

“Are you okay?"

The blond nodded brusquely.

Both men stared up at Armin in fear. 

_That's how Eren, Mikasa and I must have looked to the Colossal Titan,_ Armin realized. 

A broad smile suddenly lit up Reiner's face. _“Armin?!”_ he exclaimed. “Oh, thank God! Call the rest of the Survey Corps! A Titan just ate us, and-“ 

He stopped. He glanced at his surroundings. “Wait...What the hell?”

Armin was shocked. _Something’s wrong with Reiner. He doesn’t remember what happened._

Bertholdt put a hand on Reiner’s shoulder. “Reiner, y-you’re a Warrior. Remember?” he urged his friend. “Not a member of the Survey Corps. Armin had a shrink ray, and he…he…”

Reiner’s eyes widened. He pointed at the giant. “Armin _ate us?”_

The dark-haired man nodded. 

Reiner suddenly looked back down at his foot. When his gaze returned to Bertholdt, he seemed to be back in Warrior mode. “Did I flip out again?”

Bertholdt nodded. He looked like he was about to cry.

Armin felt incredibly guilty as he stared down at them. “I’m sorry,” he squeaked out.

Reiner didn’t really care about his own injuries. _They hurt, but they'll heal._ What pained him more was the terror on Bertholdt’s face.

“See, y-you’re okay. You’re okay,” Armin insisted to his two captives. “I couldn’t just murder you.”

“Thanks,” said Reiner suspiciously.

“Please let us go,” Bertholdt implored. He kept holding his friend. “We’ll do anything,” he repeated. “Anything!”

Armin’s heart hurt. He glanced around the room. “You’re covered in muck,” he said quietly. 

He found some soap and water, put it in a container, and brought it to his former friends. 

“To clean yourselves off,” Armin said. He went to find a towel, but collapsed onto the kitchen floor with his head in his hands. 

_They’re the enemy! I can’t just turn them back to normal and let them go!_

_But wait..._

_Maybe the Survey Corps and I can negotiate a deal…_

When Armin left, Reiner said, “Well, we're alive." 

Bertholdt kept staring at Reiner’s twisted foot. He didn't consider himself a creative, imaginative guy. But he was good at imagining the worst possible outcome of any situation. 

Right now, his imagination was running wild. 

Was this a hallucination? A dream? Would he wake up drowning in a pool of stomach acid?

_If this is real, what'll be Armin's next move?_

_Will he turn us over to the government for interrogation?_

The titan shifter glanced down at his hands. He pictured how they'd look with every nail ripped off, blood streaming down the tips of the fingers he had left.

His arms and legs broken, all in the name of “he’s a shifter, he’ll grow it back…”

_And they’ll do the same to Annie and Reiner._

His blood ran cold. 

Something touched his arm, and he jumped.

“Bert? You’re shaking,” Reiner said. The blond tried to stay upbeat. “Hey, I’m the one with broken bones here. You came out pretty unscathed.”

Reiner thought to himself, _Unscathed? Yeah, right. Bert's traumatized. _

_And he’s not the only one._

Reiner was still shocked from the day's events. Getting swallowed alive was awful enough. But seeing it happen to his best friend was worse. That look of horror as Bert was carried off would haunt Reiner's nightmares.

“What are they going to do with us?” Bert asked.

“I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it," Reiner replied. "For now, we’re alive. And Armin feels guilty about what he did. I don't think he'll let anything bad happen to us."

_I’m talking out my ass again._

Bertholdt didn't seem to buy it either, but he stayed silent.

When Armin finally came back, he brought out one of his rations. He crumbled off a small piece and offered it to the Warriors. “Here’s some bread,” he said.

_Are you sure you don't want to eat us instead?_ Bertholdt thought darkly.

But instead of saying that, he and Reiner thanked the giant.


	3. A Deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armin proposes a deal between the shrunken Warriors and the Survey Corps.
> 
> Later, when he and Reiner are alone, Bertholdt blurts out something that's been on his mind.

"You didn't kill them?" Mikasa said with surprise.

"No, they're still alive," Armin replied. "But I have a plan."

The remnants of the Survey Corps stared at the shrunken Warriors. Armin had taken the shrink ray and grown Reiner and Bertholdt to a safer, but still manageable height. Instead of two or three inches tall, they were now around six or seven inches. Like little toys. And he'd just revealed them to his friends.

In the two weeks after the Shiganshina victory, the Survey Corps had gone on leave. Armin had smuggled Reiner and Bertholdt home, and during that time, Armin had gotten to know the titan shifters and learned a lot about where they came from.

The two men soon lost their fear of their gigantic captor. 

"Armin's been very kind to us," Bertholdt said one afternoon. 

"Honestly, it's way more than we deserve," Reiner replied.

While he was on leave, Armin had fed and taken care of the titan shifters, even building a small house on his desk and buying two beds that he shrunk down for their use. As the two men told him of their childhood growing up in Marley, Armin listened – never judging, but always striving to understand. Reiner and Bertholdt had learned a bit about Armin back in cadet school, but their knowledge of him grew now too. 

Soon, they had become friends again.

_It may just be that syndrome where people sympathize with their captors,_ thought Armin, _but it’s working on me, in reverse. I’m getting attached to these guys._

_It’s too bad we grew up on different sides of the wall._

Right now, the Warriors stood atop Armin's podium, looking out at the assembled group with trepidation as the intelligent Corps member explained his plan. 

“In exchange for telling us everything they know about their mission and the outside world," Armin said, "I propose that we let them live. They'd still face consequences for their crimes - they’d have to stay with me so it would be a sort of supervised imprisonment-but they wouldn’t face the death penalty, and our government wouldn’t have to pay for a prison cell. And we wouldn’t need to interrogate them harshly!” he said, turning towards Hange and Levi. Levi almost looked disappointed.

Armin continued, “They’ll talk with me! There’s no need to torture them for information.”

Eren glared at him. “Armin…seriously?” He looked around the hall and spoke again, his voice rising. “Seriously? Just…let these enemies of humanity LIVE after all they’ve done to us? All the misery their Titans caused? Are you _crazy?”_

“He has a point,” Bertholdt murmured to his comrade. Reiner raised an eyebrow at him.

_“They killed my fucking mother!”_ Eren screamed. “And a ton of our friends! What the hell’s wrong with you, Armin?”

“Eren,” Levi glared. “Calm your emotions.”

“I agree with Eren!” Floch shouted. "Commander Smith would never let this shit fly!"

When the room quieted down, Reiner gave a speech about how horribly regretful both he and Bertholdt felt about their actions. He didn't expect it to change anyone's minds, but he felt like he had to apologize.

The Corps members talked amongst themselves. 

Over the next few minutes, Armin used his charisma and debate skills to persuade the majority towards his plan. His face lit up as he appealed to both empathy and logic. Everyone voted, and Armin's plan won. 

"I still hate those traitors," Eren said, "but I guess they'll be your problem now." 

Sasha and Connie had voted for Armin. 

Someone said, “Reiner and Bertholdt can rot for all I care, but if their info lets us hit the Titans where it hurts, I’d count that as a win!”

"What matters is they're no longer a threat," Mikasa told everyone.

Hange said excitedly, “Can I do experiments with the tiny people?!”

Armin turned towards her. He felt queasy all of a sudden.

“Haha, your face!” the scientist laughed. “No, really. They’ll be non-painful ones. I promise.”

Levi gave Hange a look like something stank.

“It depends,” Armin said. “We’ll have to talk about that later.”

Levi said, “If they promise to give us information, and if you promise to give the Beast Titan, and everyone else in their organization NO QUARTER and NO MERCY, I suppose we can accept your terms.”

Armin blushed with happiness. “Th-Thank you!” He tried to act serious. “I appreciate you hearing me out. The information we get from these two will benefit all of humanity!”

He looked down at Reiner and Bertholdt on the shiny wooden platform. “See? We’re all reasonable people. I knew we could work something out!”

“You…really want us to stay with you for the rest of our lives?” Reiner asked. He was baffled that Armin would take this on.

“Sure! It won’t be that bad,” said Armin.

“It’s not like our lives will be that long, anyway,” Bertholdt said quietly. 

Reiner broke into a bittersweet smile. He said, “At least we get to spend them together.”

He and Bertholdt gazed into each other's eyes. They took a step forward.

Armin shattered the moment. “Can I hug you guys?”

When they agreed, he brought the tiny figures close to his cheek and softly squeezed them. 

The Warriors glanced at each other as they were mushed into Armin’s face. Bertholdt looked so uncomfortable that Reiner started to chuckle. Bert's face morphed into an awkward smile.

Armin eventually pulled away with a bright grin. 

From out in the audience, Levi said to Jean, “Armin does realize this will make him a target, right?” 

“I don’t think he cares,” Jean replied.

“I’m glad we didn’t have to kill them,” said Connie. “I know they’re Titan shifters, but…they were our friends. I’ll never forget that.”

Levi said flatly, “They’re scum. We’re only doing this to get more accurate information.”

Sasha said excitedly to Hange, “You and your experiments! That look on your face when you brought up experimenting on Reiner and Bertholdt…it kinda creeped me out.”

Hange said, “What’s creepy about science?”

Meanwhile, the blond at the podium was so happy, he felt he’d burst through the ceiling. _Logic and empathy prevailed this time._ Armin looked down at his captives. “I won’t let anything happen to you,” he said sincerely. 

“Thanks for doing this for us, Armin,” said Reiner seriously. "We're in your debt."

“Yeah, thank you,” Bertholdt said.

“Of course!” their friend beamed.

The meeting was over. As Armin placed the Warriors into his pocket and walked away, Reiner embraced Bertholdt. Reiner said, “I’m glad everything turned out alright.”

_Though there’s a low bar for “alright” these days,_ the blond thought.

“I love you,” Bertholdt blurted out.

Reiner stared. Bertholdt pulled back, then hugged Reiner even harder. “I’ve …always loved you,” he confessed. “More than Annie or anyone.”

“Bert,” Reiner said slowly. A jolt ran through his whole body. 

He caressed his friend’s back, a little more intimately, as his face turned pink. “I know. And you _know_ I love you too.” Reiner was never good at touchy-feely stuff. “I mean, shit. If there’s someone I have to be stuck with at six inches tall for the rest of my life, I’m glad it’s you.” 

For the first time all day, Bertholdt laughed. His heartwarming chortle was a rare thing these days.

Reiner looked at his best friend. It was dark inside Armin’s pocket, but Reiner could still see the shape of Bert’s tall, fit body, and the deep blush on his face. His heart swelled in his chest. Reiner moved forward, grabbed Bertholdt and kissed him.


End file.
